So, are you prepared for a motherfucking miracle?

Here it is: the fighting rules don’t suck.

It’s just one section out of many, I know, but at this point I’ll take what I can get.

So, fighting. It’s a mercifully straightforward affair. The game uses square grid. During a round you can attack an enemy (if you use a melee weapon, you only can attack an enemy standing on an adjusted square and can’t attack diagonally), act (draw a weapon, change weapon, cast something from the Bible, do a thing) or move by one or two squares. Only one action per round is allowed.

There is no initiative. The AM secretly decides what each enemy is doing this round, then the players decide on their own actions, then they all are performed semi-simultaneously. Attacks are resolved first, and even if you killed an enemy this round, they still get to attack you if that’s what the AM picked for them to do. Actions are resolved second, and movement takes place at the end, with PCs’ movement taking precedence over enemies in case of collisions.

Normally, stuff like this is avoided by modern TRPGs because it can easily lead to a right mess where all characters get in each other’s way and there is no way to tell who actually did what and to what effect. But DragonRaid fight is pretty basic and not very dynamic, what with movement being pretty limited, so it should work reasonably fine.

Attacks are resolved pretty simply and don’t utilize the success grid. Instead, it’s Weapon Ability + d10 for PC vs Battle Ability + d8 for enemies for attack, Shield of Faith + d10 vs Battle Ability + d8 for defense. If the attacker gets the higher result, the attack connects. Damage is determined by a separate roll which depends on a weapon. Most weapons dish out d10 damage, some (especially distance weapons) instead use d10/2 rounded up (for enemies it’s d8 instead).

Surprise attacks are rolled against passive defense. That is to say, the defender don’t roll a dice, Shield of Faith or Battle Ability score is used as is instead. Withdrawing from combat also gives the opponents surprise attacks should they choose to attack the retreating character.

Again, pretty straightforward and simple if not particularly engaging. It’s a bit unclear how long the withdrawal takes, though.

Losing HP (which are called Physical Vitality here because the game is big on renaming established terms) results in various conditions, depending on how many you have remaining. Being wounded means you have to make Endurance checks or be unable to travel long distances (though others may still carry you). Being seriously wounded prevents you from fighting or traveling outright, then it’s unconscious and dead states, which are self-explanatory.

The game reminds us that Light Raiders are forbidden from killing dragon slaves (but, again, not dark creatures because fuck those guys, right?). The AM is required to inform the players when HP of their opponent reach 10 (so there is a risk of killing them with one strike).

Instead of killing, PCs have two options to deal with such opponents. The first is disarming. Disarming requires you to roll d10. If you roll 9 or 10, the opponents is successfully disarmed. That’s nice, though I’m not sure what’s to stop dragon slaves from picking up their weapon the next round or go into fist-fight. Maybe it’s “disarming” instead. Also note the lack of any opposing checks, it’s a straight lucky shot, which is unsatisfying gameplay-wise.

The second option is overpowering and involves tackling the opponent to the ground and tying them up. It’s one of the rare occasions where physical attributes (strength and agility) are actually useful since for this option you add them together and compare with enemy’s HP + d8 (PCs can also combine their attributes together for this purpose). If your result is higher, the enemy is successfully overpowered, though it takes two more rounds to tie them up. Therefore, the usual tactic of Light Raiders is to whittle the enemy’s HP down to below 10 and go for grappling afterwards. Seem like it would be problematic to implement when fighting multiple opponents, but hey, pacifism, even technical pacifism where you do stab enemies a few times, is not supposed to be easy.

Speaking of multiple enemies, there are rules for it. And they’re pretty brutal. Basically, when you’re surrounded by enemies, you get only one defense roll. Then the enemies’ attack rolls are subtracted from it (starting with the lowest roll). Once your roll reaches below zero, the attack that did it and all following attack connect automatically. And, well, unless you fight opponents significantly weaker than you, on average you’d block one attack if any, and the rest would fuck you up. Given that starting HP are generally somewhere in low 20s, even one missed attack can be a serious business.

At least only four enemies can attack you at the same time, and it should be rare, given slow movement rate. You’re more likely to use this rule for fighting against some tough monsters and such.

I’m not entirely sure if the rules apply to distance weapons. Seem like they don’t, which is good since it’s trivial to position a bunch of archers to attack you all at the same time, resulting in a very dead PC.

Next we have advanced combat options.

The Advanced Combat System is included for the purpose of making a battle more realistic and exciting. Since real war is brutal, this may offend some players. This system is optional. The Adventure Master and the group can decide together whether to use it or not, but it should not be used if anyone is offended by it. See section III E in the Adventure Master Manual for further guidelines.

The “brutality” is on the level of the Black Knight sketch, so I’m not sure if the warning is really warranted, but, eh, different people have different sensibilities.

Anyway, the advanced combat adds two options which you can pick instead of doing the normal attack. The first is half-swing, which is basically a normal attack that does only half damage. I have no clue how it works with crossbows. Useful if you want to attack a dragon slave one last time before attempting to overpower them.

The second is critical swing. It’s a normal attack, but after it connected, you roll another d10. If you roll 10, you get critical hit. Those familiar with AD&D advanced options would recognize it as it’s a standard “hit a body part, see it fall off.” There is a huge table with various effects: shattered knees (good to use against adventurers), severed arms, some instant kill options, etc.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of this type of thing. Pulling off a huge table breaks the flow of the combat, and the results can turn a potentially exciting fight anticlimactic if you just cut off enemy’s head. Especially if it’s a dragon (though I’m not sure if you can use this option against them).

More importantly, it’s a very bad idea to use this stuff against PCs, which is a default option if you enable the advanced combat. It doesn’t matter that much if some random troll gets ahead of himself, so to speak, but instant killing of PCs thanks to random roll is a quick way to generate some serious drama. PCs, of course, see more on-screen combat during the game than any NPC, so they’re liable to lose their limbs and get partial paralysis (which is a thing that can happen in this game if you hit the neck) sooner or later. There are no ways of healing such damage, either, and Overlord sadly doesn’t offer any divine prosthetic limbs, which I think is an oversight.

But it was an idea popular at the time, so I can’t really fault the devs for using it.

Anyway, that’s about it when it comes to regular fight. Overall, it doesn’t suck, which is a high praise for this game, but it isn’t brilliant or anything, either. The fight rules are very simplistic and basic, and if you want to do something creative, like using improvised weapons or drop some furniture on enemies, you’d have to homerule this stuff.

The rules work, but that’s all that can be said about them.

Next we have dragon slaying. It’s actually pretty interesting.

To start with, dragons don’t have Physical Vitality. They have Pride Factor (though it basically works the same, only without the penalties), meaning they’re literally held together by their egos. And indeed, the most shiny dragons get a bonus to PF.

Secondly, unlike other enemies, dragons have multiple attack mods, and effective countermeasures vary depending on which one they use this round.

Dragons always start with a mind speech attack. I’ve talked about it before: basically, a dragon imparts a thought into your head and makes you believe it. The defense is an appropriate Bible quote. I’ve harped on it before, but now that I know the rules it actually doesn’t seem so bad. The Bible is the first line of defense, not a be-all-end-all solution. If you fail against the mind speech once, Bible quotes won’t get rid of the mindfuck anymore. The issue about real life lesson remains since it’s unhelpful and I think unhealthy to attempt to shield yourself from “wrong” thoughts by mindlessly repeating Bible quotes, but, eh, whatever, at this point Bible is firmly established as the grand grimoire of a primordial being, and it makes sense that words of power would dispel the enchantment.

Anyway, if you successfully resisted the mind speech, you deal some damage to the dragon equal to the Belt of Truth rating. If not, the damage is done to the PC “as specified in the adventure.” I think it’s a damage to character strengths rather than HP, but I can’t be sure.

Next mode is fire. The only defense against it is the Shield of Faith. No roll, pure comparison of attack and defense scores. If the dragon’s ability is higher, it does damage of d8 for every point of difference between two scores (so, if the fire attack has a rating of 10 and your Shield of Faith is 7, you get 3d8 points of damage). Since average starting HP of a PC are somewhere in low-twenties, and you can’t get them above 45, missing even one fire attack probably means you’re fucked.

Fortunately, PCs can combine their Shield scores to resist, though they all must be in the attack range of the dragon to do it.

In this mode, it seems PCs have no means of attacking back, it’s just something they have to survive.

Next mode is smoke and breath weapon. Smoke generally fill the area while breath weapon targets individual PCs. Both carry various enchantments, though this time around they don’t necessary come with outright mindfuck and may instead simply scare you or lower visibility and such. All such enchantments target a specific strength, ability or other rating. To resist, you roll d10. If the result is lower than the targeted rating, you resist the enchantment. If it’s higher, you fall under its effects.

Counterattack is possible via Word Runes unique to each type of dragons.

Finally, the last attack mode is regular attack with claws, teeth and tail. As a last fuck you, a dragon can attack with all three from the air, but otherwise it’s a normal attack resolved with regular rules. Counterattack, likewise, is standard.

From a purely gameplay perspective, it’s actually pretty cool. I can see something like that working in a jRPG boss fight.

First the boss starts with some kind of mental attack, which causes words appear on the screen. Say:

IN THIS WORLD IT’S KILL OR BE KILLED

Then you have an option of picking one out of four responses:

1. That’s not true!
2. The only one who’s going to die is you!
3. I’ll save everyone!
4. Maybe you’re right…

One of them deals damage to the boss, the rest do damage or cause debuffs to you.

Then the boss switches to regular attacks, then buffs/debuffs you must dispel to stand a chance of victory, then goes for super-attack at some point which you must predict and order your characters to guard (prediction is done either through in-game messages warning you about the boss preparing special attack or through studying the attack patterns and remembering the turn numbers).

Something like that can be done in TRPGs as well. FATE, for example, should handle it by switching between physical and mental fight and utilizing maneuvers that slap your characters or the scene with temporary aspects.

All in all, it would keep the players on their toes and force them to constantly adapt to changing battle, which is a good thing for a boss fight.

The system is not without its flaws, however. First of all, the effects of mind speech, smoke and breath weapons are omitted from the core books and are instead included in specific adventures. It’s a horrible design. I can kinda understand it for mind speech since it’s supposed to be individualized and would likely relate to specific events of an adventure, though some samples would be nice, but smoke and breath are the same among same-type dragons, so what’s the point of hiding them? Either the devs used a cheap tactic to keep the fans buying their stuff or they didn’t bother to come up with specifics, leaving them for a later day. Either way, I deeply disapprove.

The second issue is that the order of attacks after the first one is actually determined randomly by rolling d8 and following the instructions in the AM Manual.

That strikes as poor design choice as well since it’s pretty easy to make the battle too easy or too hard by random chance, especially since one of the options you can roll is retreat (imagine rolling it on the second round after drumming up the tension before the boss fight). Following a specific pattern or going with the flow of the fight would be better.

Fortunately, it’s easy to fix by just disregarding that rule and controlling the dragon manually, so it’s not a big issue.

Overall, though, I’m impressed. After the clusterfuck of character generation, the battle rules, mediocre they may be, are very refreshing. The devs managed to avoid fucking up in big way, except for undefined dragon abilities, and it actually looks like a game I wouldn’t mind playing once in awhile.

Let’s see how long my good mood will last.

The next section is rescue from sin enchantments and mind speech. *Sigh* Here we go then.

There are actually two rules for rescue. Seems like the second is used only after five adventures. The first is as follows:

The rescue procedure works as follows: The unaffected members of the party must advise their wayward friend in a kind and gentle way. This advice may include telling him why his action or thought is wrong, or why it will hurt him. Players can make use of Scripture or any other knowledge they have that would help in this situation. It is up to the Adventure Master to determine whether or not the players’ statements are appropriate, though he may rely on the guidelines suggested in each adventure to help him decide. If he rules that the advice is acceptable, the LightRaider is rescued. If he rules that it is not, the LightRaider is still trapped by the enchantment.

Well, the rule is simple, I can say that. It’s also personalized. There are no standard solution, each time you offer advice depending on circumstances, which is a nice departure from “just quote Bible on them and let God work his voodoo.”

However, there are certain problems with this rule.

Firstly, it’s very arbitrary. It all depends on AM’s ruling, not on players’ opinions or dice roll. To even implement this rule successfully the AM must have real authority over the players, otherwise it can easily lead to arguments, which makes it hard to use among peers.

Secondly, it establishes a weird relationship with real life vices and mind control. Even though the enchantments are imposed upon you by outside forces, rescue from them doesn’t require any magical power or special effort, it’s a simple matter of giving good advice to someone doing wrong thing. I’m not actually sure how to solve it. Simply quoting Bible at people feels cheap, the rule as it stands sends a weird message, something more involved with a mental battle would probably become tedious given how many enchantments there are around…

The best solution, as usual, would probably be to disconnect the enchantments from real life lessons and play them closer to typical fantasy mind control. I guess the rule could work in a situation where PCs are lost in illusion and someone unaffected snaps them out of it by reminding them who they are and what they’re fighting for, or when an enchanted PC joins the enemy and you have one of those “I know you’re still here somewhere” battles, though most enchantments here are not that dramatic.

Anyway, back to rules, the party also get a cumulative -1 penalty for every character and weapon ability for every enchanted PC if they aren’t rescued for 24 hours.

The second rescue rule involve actual rules this time around. The enchantment has a power of d8 + 10 unless stated otherwise. It generally targets specific character strength. Each unaffected character offers advice as in the previous rule. Each successful advice reduces the power of the enchantment by the score of character strength of advising PCs. The same strength as the one affected by the enchantment. So, if an enchantment reduced PC’s Love, the rest of characters use their own Love scores to reduce the curse. Once the power reaches zero, the enchantment is broken. If the combined scores of unaffected characters are not enough, they can offer advice once again, and again until it’s broken.

This is done for every enchanted character even if their enchantments are the same and they can hear the advice because fuck you, we are going to drive the point home.

If more than one LightRaider needs to be rescued, advice and counsel must continue to be offered. In other words, LightRaiders are rescued individually. (This forces players to think more deeply and to come up with more reasons why a particular evil is not a good idea).

This rule doesn’t really address the problems of the first one since the validity of the advice is still determined by the AM, but at least there is an objective to meet this time around.

I’m also very curious what would happen if everyone in the party becomes enchanted. The book doesn’t say. Is it TPK?

Overall, I don’t like the rescue rule much. While still an improvement over just quoting Bible until wrong thoughts go away, effectively stopping the game for a round of therapy session doesn’t strike me as particularly fun.

Next section is using Word Runes and Team Runes. I’ve talked about them before. To summarize, you need to quote some Bible passage in order to get some kind of beneficial effect. In order to use a specific Word Rune, your Sword of the Spirit rating must be high enough to meet its difficulty level, various runes also require specific character strength scores before you can use them, and you can only use a specific rune a certain number of times per session/day/week.

For using a rune, you get a specified effect, plus some maturity units for your Sword rating and some character strength rating.

Team Runes are the same, but the whole party must recite them. Everyone gets their benefits. So at least that’s clarified finally.

Not much to say here, especially since the individual runes are listed in the Light Raider Handbook.

Next two section are dealing with character advance, the first detailing ways of gaining maturity units (exp, basically), the second being about losing them.

Exp here is assigned to specific character strengths and the Sword score. It’s gained through using Word Runes, doing good deeds and completing adventures. It’s pretty straightforward. The only potential issue is that “good deeds” are again arbitrary. You’re supposed to demonstrate your character strengths to improve them by rescuing others from danger, helping people at your expense and so on, and it’s up to AM or adventure text to determine whether your efforts are enough.

Either way, getting 20 exp in any score improves it by 1.

Losing exp primary comes from enchantments.

A LightRaider may also lose maturity units by being disobedient to the OverLord.

Yeah.

The loss of exp can decrease the attributes permanently.

New characters are given some leeway and allowed to incur debt instead of outright decreasing attributes. Up to 3 exp in any one score can be held in debt. When you get exp, you first buy off your debt instead of increasing the attribute.

Any change in character strengths requires you to recalculate everything depending on them, which is typically a lot of formulas.

The abundance of math aside, this section is fairly straightforward.

Character advance being tied to character behavior as it’s implemented here is potentially problematic however. As I’ve said in the previous post, the issue here is that getting perfect 10 in each character strength is a stated goal of the game. The game is not particularly interested in exploring character evolution and struggle with complex moral issues, which is reflected in simplistic sin and salvation rules that leave little room to truly engage with the fun (sin) part of the equation.

Likewise, exp gain can be seen as detrimental to role-playing. You’re rewarded for abiding your virtues even when your character has very low scores in them, indicating they should struggle and likely fail to live up to their potential more often than getting things right. The game talks about the importance of role-playing and putting yourself in place of your character, but it rewards you for disregarding their personality and doing what the devs or the AM define as the right thing, always, even if it contradicts your character’s nature.

This theme is going to become more prominent in the AM Manual once we get to one specific advice, but I think it’s clear to see here as well.

And, of course, quoting Bible from memory (but not reading it) makes you a better person. Somehow.

Anyway, next section is called “Team Action” and is two paragraphs long.

Members of a raid party must remember that they are not competing against each other or against the AdventureMaster. The game system is designed to promote team eort and cooperation. LightRaiders are working together to complete a mission for the OverLord. Each one will have his own strengths and weaknesses; therefore, they must be interdependent.

Yeah, that’s how TRPGs generally work. Honestly, the constant refrain of “work together” is kinda weird to me. I guess back in 80s it was relatively novel in contrast with traditional boardgames.

The next section is about role-playing (also very brief, three paragraphs), which is very funny in the context of the previous section:

Role playing makes the DragonRaid Adventure Learning System different from many other games. It means taking on the personality or characteristics of an imaginary individual, acting like that person, thinking like him, and trying to portray him as accurately as possible, basing your actions on his characteristics. At first, role playing may seem threatening, and many players are inhibited because they have never played a game like this before. But as time goes on, role playing becomes more comfortable and more fun.

Or it would be if you didn’t have to constantly check your behavior for deviations from the party line.

The brevity of this section is weirdly appropriate given that the game is perversely dungeon crawl in its design, only substituting spiritual warfare for regular traps. So of course it’s not very interested in facilitating good role-playing even if it pays some lip service to the concept.

The section also contains an advice to use cue cards to distribute information, which is pretty standard, though puts more emphasis on character communicating in cases when only one gets good info (like hearing distant noises too quiet for others to hear and such) rather than providing reasons for characters to conceal said information, which is generally a more common reason for using cue cards. In general, using cue cards when only one character hears noises in such is inefficient since you can simply tell them, then they can state they told the rest of the party. It wastes less time and keeps the rest of the players engaged since they don’t need to wait for one of them to read the card.

The last section is called “Improving the Game” and contains various small advices. Another reminder to work together, a suggestion to use lead miniatures, advice to meet regularly to establish a routine and a reminder to not take the game too seriously and not be too sad if your character dies. The last one is worded pretty dickishly, though.

It is disappointing if your character is about to make a score of 10 in all the Character Strengths and suddenly gets killed; but remember that it is only a game. You can roll up another character and try again. Learn from your mistakes and move on.

Yeah, “almost winning the game” and “failing in the middle” are two different beasts. Neither warrants crying or anything, but it’s understandable if the former puts you in a bad mood for a day or two.

The section makes up for it with the last and best advice:

Serve lots of refreshments: soft drinks, or chips, or whatever else your group may desire.

I can drink to that. Snacks are very important in any TRPG. Don’t ignore them.

And that’s the rulebook.

Well, as you can see, it does have some neat ideas that are unfortunately buried under a pile of shit that is the character strengths system and everything that connects to it. Honestly, if you really want to play a game of mind control and character transmutation, you’re better off with using FATE. It allows you to do pretty much everything DragonRaid does but better and without the underlying agenda. Most importantly, it allows you to make mistakes without punishing you, the player for them but incorporating them into the overall narrative.

That’s it for now. Tune in next time to see me righteously mingling with AM. The manual was written by people who give advice on leadership in small group (including families, apparently), so it’s gonna be good.